Josefina+Garcia


 * SUMMARY: Josefina Garcia, age 37, died May 23, 1985 after an abortion at Family Planning Associates Medical Group in California.**

Documents indicate that Josefina Garcia, age 37, mother of 2, died after abortion at a Family Planning Associates Medical Group (FPA) facility.

Josefina's survivors filed suit against FPA owner [|Edward Campbell Allred], and 5 other doctors: [|Kenneth Wright], Leslie S. Orleans, Earl Baxter, Soon Sohn, and Thomas Grubbs.

The family said that staff failed to determine that Josefina had an ectopic pregnancy before proceeding with a routine safe and legal abortion procedure by D&C on May 23, 1985.

After her abortion, Josefina was left unattended in a recovery room, where she [|hemorrhaged]. She died the day of her abortion.

Her death certificate notes "acute bronchopneumonia due to anoxic encephalopathy following cardiopulmonary arrest due to ruptured tubal gestation with hemorrhage" as the cause of Josefina's death. Mention is made elsewhere on the death certificate of "status post uterine suction curettage."

Though in theory women who choose abortion should be less likely to die from ectopic pregnancy than women who intend to carry to term, they are actually [|more likely to die] because sloppy practices lead them to believe that they had normal uterine pregnancies that were terminated. Thus, they ignore symptoms that would ordinarily lead them to seek prompt, life-saving medical care.

Regardless of whether or not abortion is legal, an ectopic pregnancy is something any abortionist should have diagnosed, if not before the abortion, then certainly after the abortion was completed and there were not pieces of fetus removed. Either way, there was little excuse for failing to detect the ectopic pregnancy. Whether Josefina lived or died would have depended on the state of medicine at the time, and the ordinary skills of doctors who were not abortionists.

Because the abortion is noted only as a suction curettage, and is mentioned in a supplementary box rather than in the cause of death box on the death certificate, a data run on California death certificates did not identify Josefina as an abortion death.

Josefina is one of many women to die at this NAF facility after the [|National Abortion Federation] was founded.

Other women known to have died after abortion at Allred's facilities include


 * Denise Holmes, age 24, 1970
 * Patricia Chacon, age 16, 1984
 * Mary Pena, age 43, 1984
 * Lanice Dorsey, age 17, 1986
 * Joyce Ortenzio, age 32, 1988
 * Tami Suematsu, age 19, 1988
 * Deanna Bell, age 13, 1992
 * Susan Levy, age 30, 1992
 * Christina Mora, age 18, 1994
 * Ta Tanisha Wesson, age 24, 1995
 * Nakia Jorden, 1998
 * Maria Leho, 1999
 * Kimberly Neil, 2000
 * Maria Rodriguez, age 22, 2000
 * Chanelle Bryant, age 22, 2004



Sources: Press-Telegram 4-25-88; California Death Certificate No. 85-106566include component="tagCloud"